The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced rapid growth. Technological advances in IC materials and design have produced generations of ICs where each generation has smaller and more complex circuits than the previous generation. However, these advances have increased the complexity of processing and manufacturing ICs and, for these advances to be realized, similar developments in IC processing and manufacturing are needed. In the course of integrated circuit evolution, functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per chip area) has generally increased while geometry size (i.e., the smallest component (or line) that can be created using a fabrication process) has decreased.
As a part of the semiconductor fabrication, metal trenches may be formed. The metal trenches may serve as the metal lines that provide interconnections for the various components for an IC. The metal trenches are separated by a low-k dielectric material. However, conventional semiconductor fabrication techniques have not provided a low-k dielectric material that is porous enough. This may adversely affect the performance of the conventional semiconductor ICs.
Therefore, while the low-k materials in conventional ICs have been generally adequate for their intended purposes, they have not been entirely satisfactory in every aspect.